For all the corridor plotting and text chopping the best hope is a fudge. After Copenhagen we’ll turn to wackier solutions
Tony Brenton

Sometime towards the end of the Copenhagen climate conference, Michael Zammit Cutajar, a Maltese diplomat and conference chairman, will gather 20 or so people into a back room of the Bella Conference Centre for an all-night session (or two) to do the deal. All the noise and the posturing, the 20,000 delegates, the lobbyists, the dramatic green demonstrators, the 180-page legal negotiating text, will be shut outside.
Those 20 people — representatives of the world’s key climate-change governments — will have in front of them perhaps a ten-page text. They will agree, or not, on greenhouse gas emissions limits for developed countries, financial assistance for developing countries and emissions constraints that developing countries are willing to take on in exchange for that assistance. If they find agreement they will sell it to the wider conference and then to the wider world. It will set our course for at least the decade to come.
What are the chances of success? Of all the negotiations I have been involved with, those on climate have been the hardest to call. This is the biggest piece of international business that mankind has ever done. Huge interests are involved (we are talking about fundamental reform of the world’s trillion-dollar energy sector). Lobbyists, from Exxon to Greenpeace, are stridently present. The range of national interests — from Saudi Arabia’s dependence on hydrocarbons to Vanuatu’s potential submersion — is bewilderingly wide. And because it is so important, the maelstrom of corridor plotting, text chopping, endless reaffirmation of entrenched negotiating positions and rhetoric make it very hard to identify where the centre of gravity might lie.
In the case of Copenhagen the shelving of efforts to finalise a legally binding text demonstrates how complex and fractious things have become. That the negotiation coincides with a world recession limits what rich countries can offer. And the poor world remains obdurate that it will do nothing the rich world won’t pay for. On the other hand, no one wants to take responsibility for failure. The US has come up with its first real offer on emission cuts since its abandonment, a decade ago, of the Kyoto Protocol. Even in India (a benchmark developing country) there is some debate about more flexibility.
So outright failure is unlikely. But it is equally unlikely that Copenhagen will get us right around the climate corner. The probability has to be, at best, an interim deal with lots of work still to do. This is a pity because, behind the fog of negotiation, the political landscape is more positive than it has ever been.
Two key things have changed. First, US public and scientific opinion is much more convinced of the reality of climate change, and the need to deal with it, than was the case at Kyoto. And the US now has an administration ready to take the lead. This doesn’t mean it will be easy to reduce US energy profligacy, but at least the will is now there.
Second, the hitherto refusal of the developing world to contribute to emissions reductions is beginning to fragment. Key players, led by China and Brazil, recognising the potential costs of climate change for themselves as well as the benefits of taking the lead in energy-saving technology, are now looking for ways to constrain their emissions growth. This is a huge step in negotiations that have been dominated by a sterile confrontation between developed and developing blocs. In a world where the annual increase in China’s emissions alone outweighs all of the savings achieved by the Kyoto Protocol, it is a crucial step.
But, while the politics may be moving from red to green, the science tells us that the timing problem is acute. The positive trend is undermined by evangelism winning over objectivity in the scientific debate. The reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change read more like exercises in advocacy than sober scientific analysis. This has undermined the credibility of their projections and contributed to the growth of “climate agnosticism”, led here by Nigel Lawson.
Even taking into account the huge uncertainties, the picture painted by the IPCC and others is both persuasive and stark. We have perhaps a couple of decades to reduce global emissions if we are to avoid catastrophic climatic effects.
It is hard to see the negotiating process moving fast enough to turn this round. Its first product, the 1991 Rio Convention, was broken-backed at birth. Its second product, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, was abandoned by the US and, to the extent it did succeed, only did so because of the Soviet industrial collapse. The process has been bedevilled by green posturing, overoptimistic target setting, US solipsism and Third World militancy. The “Copenhagen Protocol”, if we get there, will reincorporate the US and begin to place downward pressure on the fastest-growing emissions; those from developing countries. But while those emissions may grow more slowly, they will continue to grow. The governments of the poor are not going to let concern about the climate condemn their people to remain poor.
So radical new approaches are going to be needed. Expect, after Copenhagen, much more talk of carbon taxes and tariffs. Expect, too, sharply increased interest in the various “geoengineering” options recently aired by the Royal Society: global afforestation, deliberate plankton growth, “space mirrors”, artificial volcanoes. Wacky (and hideously difficult to agree) as some of these may seem, they may soon be our only way out.
Tony Brenton was a British diplomat from 1975 to 2009, most recently serving as Ambassador to Moscow

Damian Carrington
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 November 2009 22.54 GMT

Prominent campaigners, politicians and scientists have called for Canada to be suspended from the Commonwealth over its climate change policies.
The coalition’s demand came before this weekend’s Commonwealth heads of government summit in Trinidad and Tobago, at which global warming will top the agenda, and next month’s UN climate conference in Copenhagen. Despite criticism of Canada’s environmental policies, the prime minister, Stephen Harper, is to attend the Copenhagen summit. His spokesman said today: “We will be attending the Copenhagen meeting … a critical mass of world leaders will be attending.”
Canada’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions are among the world’s highest and it will not meet the cut required under the Kyoto protocol: by 2007 its emissions were 34% above its reduction target. It is exploiting its vast tar sands reserves to produce oil, a process said to cause at least three times the emissions of conventional oil extraction.
The coalition claims Canada is contributing to droughts, floods and sea level rises in Commonwealth countries such as Bangladesh, the Maldives and Mozambique. Clare Short, the former international development secretary, said: “Countries that fail to help [tackle global warming] should be suspended from membership, as are those that breach human rights.”
The World Development Movement, the Polaris Institute in Canada and Greenpeace are among the organisations supporting the plan. Saleemul Huq, a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said: “If the Commonwealth is serious about holding its members to account, then threatening the lives of millions of people in developing countries should lead to the suspension of Canada’s membership immediately.”
Canada’s environment department refused to comment on the call for it to be suspended.
The Commonwealth comprises 53 states representing 2 billion people. In the past it has suspended Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and South Africa for electoral or human rights reasons. Speaking earlier this week, its secretary general, Kamalesh Sharma, said: “I would like to think that our definition of serious violations could embrace much more than it does now.”

Reuters, Friday November 27 2009
By Chris Buckley
BEIJING, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Currency tensions and climate change will feature in talks over the weekend and on Monday between Chinese and European Union leaders in Nanjing, capital of east China’s Jiangsu province. Here are some questions and answers about the summit and the state of EU-China relations.
WHO’S MEETING WHOM?
The EU will be chiefly represented by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, whose country holds the EU’s rotating presidency. On Monday, they will meet Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.
Before the summit, central bank and financial officials from each side will meet over the weekend in Nanjing. European Central Bank Governor Jean-Claude Trichet is due to hold talks with Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China.
WHAT ARE THE MAIN ISSUES TO BE DISCUSSED?
Both sides have said the topics in focus are the global economy, climate change and strengthening ties. But China and the EU will bring different priorities to the table.
(1) The economy and trade. For Brussels, the priorities will be pressing China on currency and trade. China has been holding its yuan currency virtually pegged to the dollar even as the dollar has weakened against other key currencies. That has meant the yuan has dropped 15 percent against the euro since March.
That angers Europe, which has been trying to narrow its big trade deficit with China. In 2008, the EU imported Chinese-made goods worth 247.6 billion euros and exported to China goods worth 78.4 billion euros.
European officials also believe a stronger yuan is essential to global rebalancing efforts as the United States consumes less. Without it, they fear that the euro zone will bear most of the burden of a weaker dollar.
China has its own worries about EU anti-dumping actions aimed at its exports, steps Beijing has decried as protectionism.
(2) Climate change. The summit takes place just over a week before negotiations open in Copenhagen on a new international pact to fight climate change.
The EU and China will be key players in those negotiations, and the summit is a last chance to assess and test positions.
On Thursday, China announced goals to cut carbon intensity — the amount of carbon dioxide emitted to make each unit of economic value — by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 compared with levels in 2005. But it also said those were purely domestic commitments and would not be part of any internationally binding commitment.
(3) Market economy status and an EU arms embargo. China may press the EU to recognise it as a “market economy”, and end an embargo on arms sales imposed after the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Beijing.
Granting “market economy status” would limit some anti-dumping and other trade protection measures taken by Brussels against Chinese goods.
WHAT WILL THE MEETINGS ACHIEVE?
The summit is unlikely to produce substantive agreements on any of these issues. It will give leaders from both sides an opportunity to set priorities as the EU seeks to lift its diplomatic profile after the Lisbon treaty reforms.
As for Europe’s plea for a stronger yuan, the issue that will garner the most interest from global financial markets, leading euro zone officials have said they expect no immediate results from the talks.
HOW GOOD ARE CHINA-EU RELATIONS?
China and the European Union have been seeking to revive ties after a rough patch in 2008 stoked by friction between Beijing and EU member states, especially France and Germany, over Tibet.
Tensions peaked late in 2008, when French President Nicholas Sarkozy met the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibet Buddhist leader who Beijing calls a “separatist”.
France held the six-monthly rotating presidency of the European Union at the time, and China withdrew from a planned summit with the EU.
Relations would not have been so vulnerable if broader ties were more robust. But relations have been sapped by trade imbalances and disputes, slow progress in negotiations for a new treaty to steer relations, and the unwieldiness of dealings between an often opaque China and the EU and its 27 sometimes fractious member states. (Editing by Ken Wills and Dean Yates) ((chris.buckley@thomsonreuters.com; +86-13501014479)) ((If you have a query or comment on this story, send an email to newsfeedback.asia@thomsonreuters.com))

There is no ‘good’ way to do emissions controls.
New Zealand’s government is crowing about the amended cap-and-trade bill passed Wednesday as a “balanced” and “responsible” solution to fight global warming. That is, if pork barreling and ramming a bill through parliament without any serious economic study of its impact is what’s considered “responsible.”
Prime Minister John Key’s National Party-led government ran on a campaign promise to amend the previous government’s onerous cap-and-trade law, which was rushed through before the last election. Mr. Key promised to water down the scheme to protect the economy from severe harm, while fulfilling New Zealand’s Kyoto Protocol commitments.
The Key government soon found that its coalition partners, the ACT Party and the Maori Party, had serious reservations about passing what turned out to be the world’s most comprehensive cap-and-trade bill. No wonder they were alarmed: National’s bill covered all greenhouse gases and would affect most of the economy, including the country’s key export industries of agriculture and forestry.
Critics also questioned the usefulness and timing of the bill, pointing out that New Zealand only contributes 0.2% of total global emissions, and a Copenhagen deal next month looks unlikely. Add in the climate-gate scandal bubbling in Britain, where evidence surfaced that climatologists tried to suppress skeptical global-warming studies, and there’s even more reason to delay.

Yet the nominally conservative Key government plowed ahead by buying off the Maori Party earlier this week. In return for votes, the Maoris will get “energy efficiency assistance” for 8,000 low-income homes, the right to plant trees on government land to offset emissions elsewhere, and other goodies. The Nationals then rushed the bill through parliament under the “urgency” tool, used to extend sitting hours for priority business. The bill still only passed by a hair, 63-58.
Pork barreling to get a bill passed is nothing new in politics. But in this case it is only part of a bad picture: The government still has not released its own comprehensive study of the new law’s potential economic impact. Kiwis may soon demand one as their energy prices rise and foreign investment goes elsewhere—all in the name of being “responsible.”

Leo Hickman: Brilliantly rapped spoof news report for YouTube channel TheJuiceMedia pits Al Gore against Lord Monckton in a war of words over climate change

It’s what the world has been waiting for. We’ve had the Rumble in the Jungle. And the Thriller in Manilla. But now – following years of trying to get it on– we’re proud to bring you news of The Storming of the Warming.
Finally, Al Gore and Lord Monckton have come together to “rap battle” over climate change. Well, sort of.
Hugo Farrant, “an MC/spoken word performer from the UK now based in Melbourne”, has put together a brilliantly rapped “news report” for TheJuiceMedia, a YouTube channel which describes itself as “an independent media source for events taking place in Australia relating to indigenous people, history, law and the environment”. Farrant, who has clearly done his homework, plays the role of anchorman Robert Foster, as well as the parts of well-known climate combatants Al Gore and Lord Monckton. Neither Gore nor Monckton come out of it too well. Here’s a snippet of their rap battle …
Monckton: The IPCC are Marxist trapeze artists, bleeding the free market. We’re the target! They’ll keep us herded in corners: one currency, one government, a new world order.
Gore: Better than the coroner, Let this fact just sink in: World. Unite, or face the sixth mass extinction, a feedback cycle, the death of the Gulf Stream. We need ‘clean coal’ or it’s the end of the Holocene.
Monckton: That’s just postulated, we’ve got to collate it. Secretly these people want the earth depopulated, a communist dictatorship, a way station, good Christians killed by UN troops and Aids patients.
Gore: You strain my patience, you scaremonger.
Monckton: It’s freedom they’re plundering, and you’re the scaremonger king!
Gore: I got my Nobel prize, I was nearly the president.
Monckton: I share that prize for revealing this evidence.
Gore: You got a pin melted down from a physics experiment.
Monckton: You’re a pin melted down from a physics experiment.
Foster: Lord Monckton! Let me hear from you. Have any of your articles been peer-reviewed?
Monckton: Well, no, but the SPPI has published a few.
Foster: The Science and Public Policy Institute. Their chief policy adviser happens to be who?
Monckton: Well, me.
Foster: You? So you publish you. I think we’ve heard enough from you. People, please, research the truth. Nowadays it isn’t tough to do. Mr Gore.
Gore: Robert, we need global governance: A new world order to replace local governments.
Foster: And I suppose who better to comprise it than the very same people who altered the climate.
Gore: Sure, who else?
Hugo Farrant is a name to watch, it seems. Last year, he helped to put together another spoof rap that went viral called Branksome, which was about life on the mean streets of Branksome, a middle-class suburb of Poole in Dorset. It went as far as catching the attention of the Daily Telegraph and the Sun.

The momentum towards Copenhagen is gaining but how do emissions reduction offers from the EU, US and China compare?

Bryony Worthington
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 November 2009 15.57 GMT
So we finally have the long-awaited emissions reduction offers from the US and China: a 17% reduction from 2005 levels from the US and a 40-45% reduction in “the carbon intensity of the economy” by 2020 from China. The momentum towards the UN climate talks in Copenhagen seems to be gaining by the hour and these developments must be welcomed.
The EU’s initial offer of a 20% cut on 1990 levels over the same time period – finalised last month – is the third important part of the jigsaw. These three country blocks account for around 60% of global emissions so what they do is incredibly important. But what do these targets really mean?
China’s impressive-sounding target to reduce its carbon intensity refers to cutting the CO2 that is emitted per yuan of economic activity. But because economic forecasts already predict that China’s economy will become less carbon intensive in the next decade, the country’s pledge actually only amounts to a cut of between zero and 12% off business as usual emissions in 2020 (depending on what version of the future you choose to compare it with). That is roughly a 40% increase in CO2 emissions on current levels.
The US’s number, as environmentalists, frustrated by the lost decade under President Bush, are keen to point out, amounts to only a 4% cut in emissions compared with 1990 levels.
But Europe is also playing the same game. The 1990 baseline for its targets flatters the EU massively because it allows it to count the emissions reductions that occurred in the 1990s due to the collapse of Soviet economies that are now part of the club. The combination of this unearned reduction, with a handful of one-off reductions in industrial gases in a few countries, delivered Europe its Kyoto target ahead of schedule. And it is now set to achieve more than a 10% reduction by the end of this decade – helped along by the current recession. Compared with 2005 emissions the current 20% target is only a 13% reduction by 2020.
So what is the best basis to judge whether countries are committing to a comparable effort? The main obstacle to reaching global agreement is countries’ concerns about their economic competitiveness. And clearly what impacts this most is the level of effort that needs to be expended to reduce emissions between now and the target deadline. So arguably the most sensible metric is to compare targets against most recent levels.
Recast against a 2007 baseline the US and EU numbers look like this: Europe – minus 11.7%; US – minus 17.3%.
Over a number of years, the EU has claimed to be leading the world in reducing emissions. It has introduced a range of policies to try to curb emissions but these have been slow to start and dedicated climate and energy policies have delivered few savings to date. This is evident not only in the emissions record so far but also from the continued unbroken link between emissions and economic growth or decline. Investment in energy infrastructure also appears not to have deviated significantly from “business as usual”, with many more coal-fired power stations being proposed in Europe. Cap and trade regulation has been implemented on 50% of emissions, however, they have been set too leniently leading too surpluses in emissions permits and low prices.
More investment is now being made into renewable electricity but this is still too insignificant on its own to achieve a significant reduction in all energy-related emissions. The harder tasks of reducing emissions from coal-fired power stations and industrial plant and decarbonising our transport and heating systems has yet to begin in earnest. As a result, emissions in recent years, the effect of the recent recession aside, have been more or less static.
But the good news is that Europe does at least have some momentum and a policy head start over countries like the US. But only tougher targets will provide the impetus for serious policy change and investment on the ground. That is why the targets announced over the last two days by the US and China are welcome because the EU should now be forced to move to its higher conditional target of at least a 30% cut on 1990 levels (meaning a 22% cut on 2007).
Even if Europe does this, the collective effort now on the table still falls well short of the latest scientific recommendations that global emissions should peak and decline by 2015 to avoid a less than 50/50 chance of going above 2C warming. Negotiators in Copenhagen must therefore try to ratchet up all the numbers currently on the table. Failing that it is imperative that these numbers for 2020 are reviewed following the publication of the next scientific assessment due in 2014. By then, the world will be well on the way to developing clean energy technologies, and it should be possible for much more ambitious targets to be agreed.
Capturing countries’ current ambitions now in a legally binding framework, even if they are low, is politically important but we should not see this as the final word. A decade is a long time and we must plan to increase our efforts as soon as possible.
• Bryony Worthington is director of Sandbag. To help make sense of the numbers Sandbag has developed a quick and easy online target convertor.

Australian PM Kevin Rudd talks a good climate game, offering 25% emissions cuts. But do the numbers add up?

Fred Pearce
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 November 2009 07.00 GMT
This may seem churlish in the week when the Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, is doing a deal with the opposition to get climate change legislation through the Senate. After all, that puts him one step ahead of Barack Obama.
But it has to be said: Australia has had a ridiculously easy ride on climate change so far. And, whatever Rudd’s domestic green credentials, he seems intent on continuing as before. For when Rudd shows up in Copenhagen in a couple of weeks, he will bring a negotiating position almost certain to ensure that, while others make cuts, Australia’s emissions remain above 1990 levels until at least 2020.
Australia got lucky in Kyoto back in 1997. I wrote afterwards in New Scientist magazine:
“Australia, which threatened not to accept any limit on its emissions, was made an offer too good to refuse. First came a licence to increase its emissions by 8%. Then, in the final hours, it won an amendment that allows it to benefit massively from past deforestation… Up to 30% of its CO2 emissions in 1990, the baseline date for the targets, were from deforestation. But far from being penalised for this, Australia won the right to count any improvement from this position as a carbon credit. It just has to make sure it doesn’t cut down quite as many.”
And that is what has happened. Aussies offset rising emissions from cars and power stations by reducing their deforestation, in Queensland and New South Wales in particular. In fact, even before signing in Kyoto, Australia had cut back deforestation emissions from 131m tonnes in 1990 to 75m tonnes. It was, according to an analysis carried out by the Sustainability Council of New Zealand, “the equivalent of Australia starting with an 11% discount on its Kyoto target.”
But the story of Australia’s emissions without forests – what carbon counters term its “gross emissions” – has been very different. UN statistics today show that gross emissions rose by 30% between 1990 and 2007. Among developed countries, that figure is exceeded only by Spain, Portugal and Iceland.
Some other countries besides Australia had a head’s start in meeting Kyoto targets. In Britain, for instance, Margaret Thatcher spent the 1990s shutting down the coal industry for reasons that had little to do with climate change. But many of those countries accepted tougher emissions targets in recognition of that head start. Under a deal with the rest of the European Union, Britain agreed to national cuts of 12.5%.
But Australia has simply milked its good luck, carrying on largely as if Kyoto never happened. As a result, today it has the highest per capita emissions of greenhouse gases of any major developed nation.
In response, a spokesperson for the Australian government said: “Australia does not accept that our base year emissions [1990] are ‘inflated’… Deforestation emissions from the Australian continent are a significant part of the national emissions profile. The large reduction in [Australian] deforestation emissions that resulted [from the Kyoto protocol] provides a lesson on the value of international agreement on deforestation emissions.”
But since Australia is the world’s hottest and driest continent, it is potentially more vulnerable to climate change than any other. That suggests another path would be prudent. And, to be fair, Rudd is aware of that. But he has a tough task persuading his industrialists and hugely powerful coal industry (Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal.)
So what is Australia bringing to Copenhagen? Rudd will be there in person. His headline grabber is the offer of a 25% cut in emissions. Except that the “conditions” he sets the rest of the world for this are so stringent that he is unlikely to have to deliver.
For instance, as the government spokesperson said, it would only be “fair” for Australia to make cuts that deep if other “advanced” countries made cuts “in the middle of the range identified by the IPCC” – that is, between 25-40%.
That’s an odd definition of fairness. It is based, according to the spokesperson, on the fact that “Australia faces higher economic costs to achieve equivalent emissions reductions… than most other advanced countries.” Funny, but I don’t remember Australia offering bigger cuts in Kyoto because it was cheap and easy to end deforestation. Quite the contrary.
Otherwise, Rudd offers a range of reductions from 5-15%. That doesn’t sound too bad until you remember the deforestation discount that Australia won in Kyoto. Along with other land-use changes since then, even a 15% “cut” would still allow Australians to emit more from burning coal in power stations, running cars and industry than they did in 1990. About 1% more, according to the analysis by the Sustainability Council of New Zealand.
A new beginning in Copenhagen? Rudd’s Copenhagen plan looks like a greenwashed version of the old Kyoto plan.

Zimbabwe Minister of State for Presidential Affairs Didymus Mutasa has dismissed the notion that the Southern African state should return to the Commonwealth. Zimbabwe left the imperialist designed institution in 2003.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos

Zimbabwe to snub Commonwealth

by: Lebo Nkatazo

ZIMBABWE shot down a proposal to return to the Commonwealth on Thursday after a senior official declared: “We don’t want to be part of the Commonwealth.”

President Robert Mugabe pulled his country out of the organisation — a club of former British colonies — in 2003 and has been a fierce critic of Britain ever since.

However, the new political coalition in Zimbabwe has helped pave the way for a possible early return.

Leaders of Commonwealth countries – including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown — will gather for their biennial meeting in Trinidad and Tobago on Friday. Discussions will take place that are expected to set a timetable for Zimbabwe to be re-admitted at the next summit in two years time.

Officials say the re-admission will be linked to a series of political reforms being implemented by the Zimbabwe government.

But Didymus Mutasa, Zimbabwe’s Minister of State for Presidential Affairs and a senior figure in Mugabe’s Zanu PF party told New Zimbabwe.com: “We left the Commonwealth by choice. If we want to go back, it’s us who are supposed to tell them.

“Their offer is empty of any meaning, it has no meaning. We went out voluntarily, nothing has changed. We still don’t want to be part of the Commonwealth.”

Mutasa said they were unconcerned that Zimbabwe’s neighbours have remained part of the organisation, declaring: “It’s not a problem that our friends are members of the Commonwealth.

“We don’t want to be bothered by the Commonwealth. We won’t go back because we don’t want to be bothered.”

Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the MDC, agreed to join a unity government with Mugabe in January after months of political stalemate.

While his party may favour a return to the Commonwealth, the final decision will likely rest with Mugabe and his Zanu PF party.

Zanu PF passed a resolution to quit the Commonwealth after Zimbabwe was suspended from the club amid accusations Mugabe had “stolen” the 2002 presidential election vote.

A bristling Mugabe said the Commonwealth had been hijacked by racists who were interfering in Zimbabwe’s internal affairs.

“The Commonwealth is a mere club, but it has become like Animal Farm, where some members are more equal than others. How can [Tony] Blair claim to regulate and direct events and still say all of us are equals?” he said.

Story from : NEWZIMBABWE.COM NEWS:
Published On: Friday, November 27, 2009 1:44 AM GMT
http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news/news.aspx?newsID=1372
© New Zimbabwe News

The Conservatives’ Green Deal would help to greatly reduce the 27% of UK carbon emissions that comes from households, writes shadow housing minister, Grant Schapps

Grant Shapps
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 November 2009 11.49 GMT

Next month world leaders will gather in Copenhagen to thrash out a deal to tackle climate change. Reaching agreement at this UN summit will be the key to addressing one of the defining challenges of our century. But the hard work isn’t just setting those targets, it’s reaching them. Each country will have to set their own priorities to reduce emissions and here in the UK, we’ll need to look close to home.
Twenty-seven per cent of all the carbon emissions in this country actually come from the homes we all live in. So it’s clear that improving the carbon footprint of our housing stock is crucial if we are to meet our legally binding carbon reduction targets.
Part of the solution lies in making the new homes we build as energy efficient as possible and I enthusiastically endorse the concept of building all new homes at zero carbon. However, the fact remains that 85% of the housing stock that we’ll be living in by 2050 already exists.
So, there is a simple and, once again, inconvenient truth – greening-up the 25m existing homes is essential. The efficiency of these properties has been largely ignored thus far.
Under a Conservative government however we will introduce the Green Deal. Every household in this country will be entitled to an allowance of up to £6,500 for energy improvements. Utilities companies, charities, social landlords will improve homes with no cost to the homeowner.
Healthy competition in retro-fits will create 70,000 new jobs and a £2.5bn marketplace, while consumers save money and most importantly 9.4m tonnes of carbon emissions are avoided. It’s a great scheme, but that doesn’t necessarily lead to great take-up. The key is to create a trigger for people to easily and quickly sign up for retro-fitting.
Imagine if you could walk into your favourite store, buy some clothes or do your weekly shop and then at the checkout, as you hand over your clubcard, the cashier offers you the prospect of permanently lower utility bills. There’s nothing to pay, now or later. Your home will be retro-fitted and all you’ll notice is that it costs less to heat and power it. Unless you enjoy burning money, you’re going to love the Green Deal. Behind the scenes this retailer is working with the banking sector to fund the £6,500 spent on retro-fitting your home, resulting in home improvements like energy-efficient lighting, modern boilers, cavity and loft insulation.
Under a Conservative government you won’t have to imagine this scheme, because the likes of Marks & Spencer and Tesco are already interested and more providers of all types will want to get in on the act. In future you’ll be able to pick-up your groceries and green-up your home at the same time.
But living a greener life isn’t just about the physical changes you can make to your home; it’s about how you live in it too.
Even without retro-fitting our properties, there are plenty of things we can do to influence our energy consumption behaviour. Last year I installed a small device which sits on the window sill in our kitchen and constantly reports how much electricity we’re using as a household.
This particular energy monitor is called a Wattson and it expresses itself £s sterling. Worryingly it let us know when we switched everything off, we were still spending about £700 per annum on powering our home.
That’s the fridge, the freezer and those TVs and chargers which all prefer to go on standby, rather than off.
With the kettle and toaster on for a cuppa and sandwich the clever little monitor told us that our electricity bill could hit £7,000 per annum.
Now rather than filling the kettle to the top, we put just enough water in for cups we’re making. Meanwhile, the kids spend their time hunting round the house searching out left on lights and Nintendo DSs which are charged but still plugged into the mains. Devices like this can really alter habits.
For the first time we also became aware that a TV or computer monitor left on standby costs around 15p per day.
With two, three or maybe four screens in the house that’s a couple of hundred pounds per year.
Slashing the 27% of carbon currently emitted from our homes is a big ask. The Green Deal enables a combination of the physical and the behavioural changes needed to make a big difference straight away. It removes barriers currently preventing a domestic green revolution. It gives us a significantly better chance of meeting our Kyoto obligations.
As we head towards the Copenhagen summit the Conservative party understands that the solution to the global challenge of climate change truly begins at home.
• Grant Shapps is the Conservative shadow housing minister